Man Killed By Bangfai Rocket In Chiang Rai

[george]

Man killed by bangfai rocket in Chiang Rai

CHIANG RAI: -- A 43-year-old man was killed when a bangfai rocket fell on his head in this northern province Tuesday afternoon.

Police said Thuan Muang-in died at the scene when the rocket fell on his head, causing serious wounds.

He said the man was attending the traditional merit making ceremony in Tambon Thungkor of Viang Chiang Rung district when the accident happened at 2:30 pm.

-- The Nation 2008-05-20

[sceadugenga]

When I lived in the Philippines it was traditional for every on or off duty police to empty his pistol skywards on the stroke of midnight, New Year's Eve. As incredible as it sounds two or three people were killed every year by falling bullets.

One year more than sixty were killed by fireworks and measures taken by the authorities to lessen the carnage are cheerfully ignored.

Amazing place: one year I was in Southern Luzon where I was taken outside by friends where we all jumped up and down in the street to shake off the previous years bad luck.

[mumbojumbo]

When I lived in the Philippines it was traditional for every on or off duty police to empty his pistol skywards on the stroke of midnight, New Year's Eve. As incredible as it sounds two or three people were killed every year by falling bullets.

[mumbojumbo]

When I lived in the Philippines it was traditional for every on or off duty police to empty his pistol skywards on the stroke of midnight, New Year's Eve. As incredible as it sounds two or three people were killed every year by falling bullets.

The man said a rocket to the head. Down or from side? Yes guns are fired usually straight up. Mith busters disproved bullets

straight up and down not fatal, but at an angle will. What kind of rocket was this?? A 2 footer in the ear from the side?? Not enough details.

[sceadugenga]

What?

Edited May 21, 2008 by sceadugenga

[toybits]

When I lived in the Philippines it was traditional for every on or off duty police to empty his pistol skywards on the stroke of midnight, New Year's Eve. As incredible as it sounds two or three people were killed every year by falling bullets.

The man said a rocket to the head. Down or from side? Yes guns are fired usually straight up. Mith busters disproved bullets

straight up and down not fatal, but at an angle will. What kind of rocket was this?? A 2 footer in the ear from the side?? Not enough details.

[klikster]

Yes guns are fired usually straight up.

Unless, of course, unless they are fired directly at something; sort of up in the air; into the floor ..

A 2 footer in the ear from the side??

A LAW anywhere from dam_n near any distance?

_{Sorry, can't help myself at times}

Edited May 23, 2008 by klikster

[sceadugenga]

I just had this funny flash of a drunken Philippino copper getting his set square out and making sure his projectiles were fired at exactly 90 degrees from the surface of what ever part of the planet he was staggering across.

[mumbojumbo]

I just had this funny flash of a drunken Philippino copper getting his set square out and making sure his projectiles were fired at exactly 90 degrees from the surface of what ever part of the planet he was staggering across.

You think it is only in the Phils? Go out at midnight next new year.

[mcgriffith]

Once in a moment of puerile drunken stupidity, I decided to discharge a firearm off the balcony of my rented house in Laguna Beach, CA on New Years Eve. This was 30 years ago. It was a .22 LR handgun. I lived 2 blocks from the ocean, up on a hill, with a clear view.

I aimed broadly over the ocean, and let rip 10 rounds rapid fire.

What an unbelievably stupid thing to do....I wasn't really thinking (obviously) that there might be SOMEONE IN A BOAT out on the ocean....

It was the first, last and only time that I discharged a firearm without being perfectly sure of what the intended target was....

[Ajarn]

No sweat from bullets fired straight up(ish), which then can fall on you. I remember on MythBuster TV program they tried to show that it was possible to get killed/seriously injured by the falling bullet. They called the myth Busted.

Edited May 25, 2008 by Ajarn

[taxexile]

Can a bullet fired into the air kill someone when it comes down?

14-Apr-1995

Dear Cecil:

Every so often you see it on the news: streets full of Middle Eastern men indiscriminately firing guns straight up into the air. If I learned anything from physics class, it's that what goes up must come down. I'm certain the returning projectiles don't float harmlessly to earth and wonder how often they plunge into bystanders. --Kathy Johnson, Madison, Wisconsin

Cecil replies:

Those Middle Eastern men. You want to shake them and say, guys! Is this the safe and sensible way to celebrate? Can't we just say "hooray!" and "whoa, baby"?

But you raise a good point. How dangerous is this really? The question is controversial. Let me lay it out point by point.

Datum 1. At first I thought being struck by a bullet falling straight down would be no worse than getting hit over the head with a two-by-four--not the average guy's idea of fun, but not fatal either. What goes up must come down, but it needn't do so at the same speed. You run up against what's known as "terminal velocity." A bullet fired straight up will slow down, stop, then fall to earth again, accelerating until it reaches a point where its weight equals the resistance of the air. That's its terminal velocity.

For further insight, we turn to Hatcher's Notebook (1962) by Major General Julian S. Hatcher, a U.S. Army ordnance expert. Hatcher described military tests with, among other things, a .30 caliber bullet weighing .021 pounds. Using a special rig, the testers shot the bullet straight into the air. It came down bottom (not point) first at what was later computed to be about 300 feet per second. "With the [.021 pound] bullet, this corresponds to an energy of 30 foot pounds," Hatcher wrote. "Previously, the army had decided that on the average an energy of 60 foot pounds is required to produce a disabling wound. Thus, service bullets returning from extreme heights cannot be considered lethal by this standard."

If 30 foot pounds doesn't mean much to you, the bullet made a mark about one-sixteenth of an inch deep in a soft pine board. About what you'd get giving it a good whack with a hammer. Note that we're talking about bullets shot straight up here. If the bullet is fired more or less horizontally, it may not lose much speed before returning to earth and could easily kill someone.

Datum 2. Then someone sent me an article from the Los Angeles Times about the problem of falling bullets in L.A. around New Year's and the Fourth of July. According to the article, doctors at King/Drew Medical Center, a major L.A. trauma center, published a report in a medical journal (Journal of Trauma, December 1994) saying that between 1985 and 1992 they treated 118 people for falling bullet injuries around New Year's Eve or the Fourth of July. Thirty-eight of the victims died.

"There is some skepticism about the numbers reported by the King/Drew team," the article continued. "The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and the Los Angeles Police Department--which serve a vastly larger area-- reported only about half a dozen deaths in the same period. . . . Other hospitals contacted by The Times . . . reported few cases."

King/Drew handles a lot more gunshot cases than other L.A. hospitals. But the King/Drew doctors also used fairly liberal criteria to identify falling-bullet victims (no gunshot heard or weapon seen, wound consistent with bullet falling from above, etc.). Given how confused trauma victims and witnesses often are about what happened, the numbers reported are probably high.

Datum 3. Still, the question isn't how many people get injured or killed by falling bullets, it's whether such things are possible at all. On further investigation, it appears the 60 foot-pound injury threshold cited by Hatcher may be misleading--a falling bullet's kinetic energy (foot pounds) alone is not a good predictor of the speed it needs to inflict a wound. B. N. Mattoo (Journal of Forensic Sciences, 1984) has proposed an equation relating mass and bullet diameter that seems to do a better job. Experiments on cadavers and such have shown, for example, that a .38 caliber revolver bullet will perforate the skin and lodge in the underlying tissue at 191 feet per second and that triple-ought buckshot will do so at 213 feet per second.

Mattoo's equation predicts that Hatcher's .30 caliber bullet, which has a small diameter in relation to its weight, will perforate the skin at only 124 feet per second. It's easy to believe that such a bullet falling at 300 feet per second could kill you, especially if it struck you in the head. In fact, maybe I need to rethink my dismissive comments about the danger of throwing a penny off the Empire State Building, although I still think the penny's tumbling in the updrafts would render it harmless.

So, Middle Eastern men, gang bangers, etc., listen up! It has been scientifically shown that firing guns into the air for entertainment is not a good idea. Please stop right away. Also knock off with the holy wars and random violence. Thank you.

--CECIL ADAMS

Edited May 25, 2008 by taxexile

[sceadugenga]

My mistake, it only happens in the US. (Naturally).

Link

[mcgriffith]

I think we can safely assume that discharging any firearm in the air for celebratory purposes, whether it be at a perfect 90 degree angle to the earth's surface, or any lesser degree- can be possibly fatal to anyone.

Bang Fai rockets....well, I won't touch that topic with a ten foot black powder-propelled pole....

Be safe out there, folks....

[Ajarn]

I think we can safely assume that discharging any firearm in the air for celebratory purposes, whether it be at a perfect 90 degree angle to the earth's surface, or any lesser degree- can be possibly fatal to anyone.

Bang Fai rockets....well, I won't touch that topic with a ten foot black powder-propelled pole....

Be safe out there, folks....

I don't think we can safely assume anything of the sort...

[sceadugenga]

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/assumption

as·sump·tion

5 a: an assuming that something is true b: a fact or statement (as a proposition, axiom, postulate, or notion) taken for granted.

And your quite correct to dispute any assumption Ajarn.

Ignoring facts presented by a reliable source is a totally different matter though.

[Ajarn]

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/assumption

as·sump·tion

5 a: an assuming that something is true b: a fact or statement (as a proposition, axiom, postulate, or notion) taken for granted.

And your quite correct to dispute any assumption Ajarn.

Ignoring facts presented by a reliable source is a totally different matter though.

Simply, I don't consider mcgriffith a reliable source.

[sceadugenga]

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/assumption

as·sump·tion

5 a: an assuming that something is true b: a fact or statement (as a proposition, axiom, postulate, or notion) taken for granted.

And your quite correct to dispute any assumption Ajarn.

Ignoring facts presented by a reliable source is a totally different matter though.

Simply, I don't consider mcgriffith a reliable source.

Ahhh.... my apologies. I misunderstood you totally.

[klikster]

It so happened that the Mythbusters episode referenced above was replayed today .. so I watched it carefully.

They interviewed a doctor who had helped police get a conviction (sorry, no details) on a celebration gunshot that killed a person (bullet in the brain). The doctor had treated another person who had been wounded in the leg.

Opinion: When the guys at Mythbusters start through their "proofs", they conduct experiments that are designed more for entertainment than scientific proof. Some of their conclusions are reached with obvious steps missing .. and would never stand up to a scientific query.

To their credit .. gunshot in the air, they never claimed that anything had been proven or disproven .. too many variables. Actually, they called the results "All the Above".

One example: Possibly due to wind conditions, they never found any of 40 rounds fired "straight up" from an M1 Garand.

[Farma]

Ok now we’ve probably figured out a bullet will kill… anyone want to do the math on what a 5 metre bamboo pole with maybe eight 2 metre length 15 centimetre diameter plastic pipes filled with propellant will do if it falls on your head.

[mcgriffith]

No hard feelings, Ajarn!

If you don't consider me a reliable source regarding firearms, ballistics, etc. I can appreciate that- as you don't know me personally.

I will offer to you that I was a high-power rifle marksman for 20+ years, and have been a weapon trainer and armorer as well. In a previous life, so to speak.

I really don't want to quibble about whether it is dangerous, or not, to discharge a firearm straight up into the air.

Suffice to say, I would recommend against it.

I don't shoot anymore, I prefer whistling a happy tune, instead......

[sceadugenga]

As a former gun owner, hunter and competition shooter (mediocre) I would only like to add that any fire arm randomly discharge without good reason is extremely dangerous.